Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

Archive Post: Pax Romana

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(A snippit at Sarah Hoyt’s place reminded me of this post, from 2006 at my original milblog.

The stone ruins of Imperial Rome underlie Western Europe and the Mediterranean like the bones of a body, partially buried, yet here and there still visible and grandly manifest above ground, all but complete. From Leptis Magna in North Africa, to Hadrian’s Wall in the contentious border between Scotland and England proper, from Split in the Former Yugoslavia, to the 81 perfectly preserved arches of the ancient bridge over the Guadiana River, in Merida that part of the empire called Hispania and in thousands of lesser or greater remnants, the presence of Rome is everywhere and inescapable. The same sort of cast- concrete walls, faced with pebbles, or stone or tile, the same sort of curved roof-tiles, the same temples to Vesta, and Jupiter, to Claudius, Mars and Mithras; the same baths and fora, market-places, villas and apartment buildings, all tied together by a network of commerce and administration. Goods both luxury and otherwise, adventurous tourists, soldiers and civil administrators— the very blood of an empire, all moved along the veins and arteries of well-maintained roads and way-stations, of which the very beating heart was Rome itself.

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The Finished Product

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The finished Victorian-style christening dress for the prospective grandchild, who will be delivered early in June. The original family heirloom christening dress was one of those items lost in the fire which burned my parents’ Southern California retirement home in 2003. It was made of very fine cotton lawn, with yards and yards of elaborate embroidered eyelet lace. I found a pattern here, which closely resembled the original dress and promised Mom that I would try and replicate the dress … and   that was as far as I got until this year. I bought some very fine Pima lawn, and several lots of vintage eyelet lace on eBay, and had a go at pattern-bashing, with the above results. All the seams are encased or flat-filled, and while the long seams were done on a machine, all the rest was hand-sewing, including feather-stitching around the front panel, bodice and hem.   There is a drawstring fastening at waist and around the neckline, as there was on the original dress. When we talked about this on the   last Chicagoboyz zoom meet-up, Ginny said that I should definitely post a picture when I had it done.   So here it is, although I am still waiting on the last lengths of lace to finish the matching petticoat, and baby bonnet. My grandson’s godfather will be standing at the font with a bale of lace and fabric in his arms and a small baby somewhere in the center …

Sax and Violins

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I’m being mildly sarcastic about the title of this post, which will mostly be about violence. And violence in the inner city, but the sarcasm comes because I have become increasingly annoyed at how the local public classical channel is making a big thing about highlighting classical composers of color and making a big thing about how they are noted composers of color. They’ve been doing the same thing about female composers, too, which accounts for the sax element. Even if those composers involved are perfectly adequate composers of the classical genre, I’m increasingly annoyed by how the fact that they were female and/or of color is being banged on about, most often in a mini lecture about how hard it was for them to get any respect at all because *insert brief lecture du jour*. It’s April and almost May, FFS: Black History month is done and dusted, and so is Woman’s History Month. I’m pretty much done with hearing about all of that. Just say “this *insert name of American composer of color* is an American composer of the umpty-umpth century, or this *insert name of female composer* is a German/Austrian/French/Luxemburgian composer of the umpty-umpth century and give the social actions-approved mini-lecture a freaking rest.

So it seems that the mob has gotten the justice that they wanted when it came to the verdict in the matter of one Floyd, George, he of the massive fentanyl overdose while in police custody. Minneapolis, Minnesota has reaped the progressive whirlwind that they planted. The progressive mob demanded a human sacrifice; the rule of law need not apply when the mob bays for blood, local prosecutors go along with the mob, and corrupt hack politicians like Maxine Waters add their voice to the chorus demanding a blood sacrifice. No wonder that progressive school districts are omitting To Kill a Mockingbird from reading lists; too many bright teenagers would absorb the implications and recognize a lynch mob when one presents in real life. It also appears that the attempt to raise a new mob after the death of Ma’Khia Bryant at the hands of a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio. Except that Ma’Khia had a steak knife in hand, was lunging at another woman with apparently murderous intent, and the Columbus police department had the wit to release video footage of the encounter almost immediately, although certain pertinent questions have yet to be answered like, why was she in foster care in the first place, who called 911, and what exactly set off the whole imbroglio.

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Thrift and the Virtue of Home Made

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It amused me this week, to read of the list of professions which have proved historically to always provide a living of sorts to those who practice them; fine carpentry, construction carpentry, metalworking, innkeeping and I don’t know what-all. Seamstressing was not among them, which is a pity … but since it his historically been an almost exclusively female-practiced profession/hobby/amusement, perhaps it’s one of those things that we can really blame the patriarchal establishment for. Women could make a living, even if relatively a barely marginal one from sewing, although if you glommed onto a high-visible and high-value client who patronized you extravagantly, a certain degree of prosperity would be assured  … but I think mostly that it was one of those things that women were expected to do anyway as part of keeping and maintaining a house, which brought the wages down for those exercising the skill professionally. Eh … never mind.

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The Age of Duty

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The age of duty passes, I suppose, with the death of Prince Philip, the chosen spouse of Her Highness, Queen Elizabeth II of England and whatever remains of the Commonwealth and domains. (And in the theology of a remote South Pacific island tribe, the worshipped deity and incarnation of a local volcano spirit, through a process which no one outside that tribe can quite figure out.)

No, I’m not a royalty devotee, in any particular degree. I’m an American, of British descent yet purely republican (small r there, let it be known), so I suppose it is a sentimental thing on my part or even a degree of decent human sympathy. As my daughter said, unforced, on reading the news the other morning, “Oh, poor Queen!” A seven-decade long marriage, for that time always under the constant, unblinking, pitilessly Sauron-like, and censorious eye of the public media ended by death at the end of a horrible and trying year. Poor Queen. A woman who was (and still remains) under unsparing scrutiny for nearly all of her life from the age of twelve or so, and yet performed flawlessly in the public sphere, on practically every occasion. The loss of her sister, her mother, now her husband, and all this on top of  a fraught and very public estrangement from an adult grandson … poor Queen, indeed. Her private circle of heart-friends and close-mouthed supporters is narrowed substantially by one, and that possibly the dearest and most personal supporter of all. Sympathy indeed. She has a pair of new dogs, and the remaining family and friends to comfort her, so at least she has that.

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